In early February, Aramis Pacitto and I decided that we would do a sequel to "The Challenger - Short Film." We had a few variations of the story, but after several re-writes we decided that we wanted to take "The Challenger" film series in a totally different direction than the first one. "The Challenger" is meant to be a drama not a comedy and we wanted to make sure that we really showed that in the second one... Because face it, the first Challenger was a better comedy than both our "Life Is hell" films. So we continued to talk about a interesting and dramatic (but not over the top) story. We looked back at the scrapped variations of "The Challenger 2" and pulled ideas from it and shaped it into something we could use. Our main story idea that we had in those scripts was that Ricci JR was out for revenge against Sledge for the murder of his father... We kept that idea and decided that Ricci would hire a hitman. But who is this hitman? Aramis came up with a interesting name for the hitman, Walker.
Then we thought about how this character would be... We wanted him to be a tough guy who could pretty much kill Sledge by himself. Aramis's main goal for this film was to show the difference between Sledge as the vigilante known as "The Challenger" & Sledge as a cop. As for my goal... I wanted to move my character, Gunnerson away from his comedic/goofy version that we saw in the first one to more of a serious cop. Aramis also wanted to show Mora in this film apposed to me doing the sound over voice like in the first one...I was fired. But before we got to who would play who, we needed a script...Aramis insisted on writing it on his own and by the end of March we had a script ready to go. Our next step was casting... We casted Dino Mazza as Antonio Ricci JR, Mike Covello as Mora, Chika Mafina as Walker and a few more people for minor roles.
By April 28th we were ready to film. The first scene we filmed was the cold open with Matthew Quan Yin & Pranavan Seleve. They both had to play 3 different people each. But since Sledge was taking them on one by one, we were able to pull it off. I was behind the camera for this scene.The scene was a big action scene and it took 5 hours to film and by the time it was done and edited we thought to ourselves, "Wow, this is way better than The Challenger One." We believed it was the best scene we ever filmed, but little did we know that it was just going to get better. The next thing we filmed was "The hostage situation" scene on May 5th. James Dinella starred in the scene as Enzo (Hostage taker) along with Anthony Digiovanni as Baily. This is the scene where Sledge gets taken for the first time by Baily. Later that day we also filmed scene 5, where Gunnerson finds Sledges Gun and we also filmed Gunnerson on the phone with Mora by the pond.
On May 19th it was the day where we were going to debut Mike Covello as Mora with a Lamborghini. In the script this scene was supposed to be a serious scene, but once we let Mike do improve it ended up becoming a funny scene. Thats fine, there's always room for comedy in drama shows. Mike was good, I will always remember filming that scene... Especially since Mike put his reading glasses under his sun glasses, a moment Aramis and I refer to as the "double glasses" scene. Mike was good and funny which works for the Mora we are displaying in this film. The scene was basically about Mora telling Sledge about Ricci and that the Challenger vigilante is a killer. You guys can expect to see more of Mike in "The Challenger 3." On May 27th, it was Gunnersons turn to become the Vigilante. I acted as Gunnerson on the edge as he was out looking for Sledge. A week later, it was the highlight of filming... Chika Mafiana as Walker. This scene we have Sledge chained to the wall and Walker is torturing him and killing people in front of him. Chikas performance in that scene was some of the best acting I've ever seen. He reminded me of Django mixed with the Joker from Batman.
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When he got back on July 14th we filmed a scene where Baily (Anthony Digiovanni) kidnapped Sledge and tied him up with twist ties in the middle of nowhere... My favorite moment of that scene is while Baily's tying up Sledge, Sledge looks to the camera with a look that says, "is this guy serious?" After completing that scene we had just two more scene to film. We started with Walker, where he introduces himself to Sledge and the last scene we filmed was on July 28th with Sledge and Gunnerson driving to the mansion in the dodge Charger. On that day we also began filming "The Challenger 3," but the details of that story will remain unknown for now.... Filming for "The Challenger 2" is done, editing is done, all is left is to release it at 12:01am on Sunday August 8th. This film is the best film we've done so far and it's only getting better.- Andrew Di Pardo
THE CHALLENGER 2 - CAST:
Aramis Neal Pacitto (Jim Caviezel look a like) as Detective Rick Sledge / The Challenger Andrew Di Pardo as Gunnerson Mike Covello as Mora Chika Mafiana as Walker Dino Mazza as Ricci Angelo Di Pardo as Provinzano Mikayla pacitto as The Hostage James DiNella as Enzo Anthony Digiovanni as Clifton Baily Matthew Quan Yin as Thug 1 Pranavan Selve as Thug 2
